Blood Doctor

Blood. That#8217;s what Martin Nanther#8217;s great-grandfather Henry was interested in. As Queen Victoria#8217;s favoured physician he became expert in diseases of the blood, particularly the royal disease of haemophilia. But, as Martin discovers whilst researching Henry#8217;s life, he was not just expert #8211; he was obsessed.

Yet reading between the lines of Henry#8217;s medical essays and diary, Martin begins to suspect that his great-grandfather was less than candid about both his life and work. What was he trying to conceal? Were the tragedies of his family life more than mere accidents? And what implications does it have for Martin, the blood doctor#8217;s descendant?

Barbara Vine#8217;s latest novel is a chilling tale of ambition, obsession and bad blood.

#8216;An outstandingly original book#8217;
Sunday Times

#8216;Beautifully subtle, superb. A magnificent novel#8217;nbsp;
Daily Mail

#8216;Ingenious. Plotted with a jeweller#8217;s intricacy and ominous to the final sentence#8217;nbsp;
Sunday Telegraph

#8216;Intriguing, absorbing and compelling#8217;nbsp;
Spectator

#8216;Brilliantly unnerving#8217;nbsp;nbsp;
Times

Blood is going to be its theme. I've made that decision long before I shall even begin writing the book. Blood in its metaphysical sense as the conductor of an inherited title, and blood as the transmitter of hereditary disease. Genes we'd say now, but not in the nineteenth century when Henry Nanther was born and grew up and achieved a kind of greatness, not then. It was blood then. Good blood, bad blood, blue blood, it's in the blood, in cold blood, blood and thunder, blood thicker than water, blood money, blood relations, flesh and blood, written in blood #8212; the list of phrases is endless. How many of them am I going to find apply to my great-grandfather?

I'm not sure if I'd have liked him, and up till now it's been essential for me to like, or at least admire and respect, the subject of the biographies I write. Perhaps, this time, it's only going to be necessary for me to be interested in him. And that won't be difficult. It's only because I found out that he'd kept a mistress for nine years and, when his fianc#233;e died, married her sister (giving her, incidentally, the same engagement ring) that I decided to write his life at all.

Of course I knew, we all knew, he'd been an eminent medical man, the acknowledged expert of his day on diseases of the blood and Physician-in-Ordinary to Queen Victoria. I knew that for his services Victoria had given him the peerage I've inherited, and that he took his seat in the House of Lords in 1896. But although he was distinguished in his day, an acquaintance of Darwin and mentioned as a friend in letters from, among others, T. H. Huxley and Sir Joseph Bazalgette, although he was the first doctor of medicine ever to receive a peerage #8212; the great surgeon Joseph Lister got one a year later - as a biography candidate I was only keeping him in the back of my mind. In the front of my mind I had Lorenzo da Ponte, Mozart's librettist. Now there was an interesting history: unfrocked priest, political dissident, philanderer, storekeeper, distiller and professor of music at Columbia University. I could have got trips to Italy out of it and maybe Vienna, but reluctantly I had to give him up. I don't have enough musical knowledge. Then the letter came from my sister.

Our mother died last year. Sarah has had the job #8212; it's always the women who get it, says my wife #8212; of sorting out and disposing of or keeping her personal possessions. Among them was a letter from our great-aunt Clara to our grandfather. Sarah thought it would interest me. She even wrote, 'If you've given up the Marriage of Figaro man, why not Great-grandfather?' I've never seen any of Clara's letters before - why would I? - but I've a feeling s

Książka "Blood Doctor"
Barbara Vine; B. Vine